Pioneer DDJ-S1 First Look at Winter NAMM 2011

Pioneer Electronics USA unleashes their first Serato Itch Controller the DDJ-S1. It is apparent to everyone in the DJ community that Pioneer is the industry standard in mixers and CD players. Their venture into the controller realm is eagerly awaited and they have definitely come correct. DVDJ Unique gave us the 411 on the DDJ-S1 at the epic Pioneer Booth as Kaskade finished up his performance. Get yours.

Transcript:

Scott: Once again it’s on, Scott Magno DJ MadFlip here with UniqueSquared.com. We’re here with Pioneer with DVDJ Unique, our homeboy, here to talk about the new controller from Pioneer. Long awaited, salivated, generated, take it away man, tell us all about it brother.Unique: Cool man, first thing is that this is the DDJ-S1, it’s the Pioneer and Serato Itch controller, it’s a dope piece man, it does a lot, a lot of stuff, I could be here for hours talking about it, but I’m going to basically go over the key features of it and first thing is, at a glance you’ll notice it’s got 2 decks and a mixer all in one unit, and another thing you’ll notice, is that it’s got feet on it and a hollow space under here, that’s so you can slide your laptop underneath here and not use up all this real estate here on your table. So, you can just slide your computer right underneath, all you’ve got is your screen and then your deck, everything in Serato Itch you’re able to control it from the surface of the DDJ-S1.First thing I’ll go over is the decks, you’ve got 2 decks one for each side, A and B, and you’ll notice you normally only have 3 banks of hotcues. well, here we put 5 because that’s what Serato has, 5. So we’ve got 5 on each side and your traditional record, erase functions, we have our traditional loop in, loop out, exit loop, and we also have the loop roll which is really popular with the Serato unit, so what you do is you just set a loop then rotate it to the left and you do your build up, or you extend it how you want, then you just loop out.Some other really cool features are actually, you have a shift button, so each of the buttons on here actually do 2 functions, so if you really want to get in depth for the more advanced DJ, you got your shift button, you do instant recording of your set, you can go all throughout your crates, all through the surface of this player.The way you play your tracks is you turn this knob here and you’re going through your music, you press the crate button, you’re going through your crates, over to your files, search through all your hard drive and so on. You can actually add to your prepare list, delete from your prepare list, and so on.One of the key features is that it’s got 2 microphone inputs, this one is a 1/4 inch and XLR combo, and it’s got 3 banks of EQ’s with obviously your level, and that’s all located on the top of your first deck. Then the second one is for the second microphone but it’s also an AUX in so again, it’s got 3 banks of EQ’s, it’s got your gain, and it’s got on/off and talk over.What’s great about it is that, not only can you use it as a microphone, but again, it’s also an AUX in. The unit is not dependent on the computer itself, so if for some reason, the computer crashes, if you’re not cleaning up your stuff, or you’re going to sites you shouldn’t be, whatever the case is, you can plug something into auxiliary throw a little iPod or something underneath it and you’ve got your line in and it will still function you can do talk over or whatever you’ve got to do.Again the crossfader, you’ve got your traditional stuff, you can actually crossfader reverse, the fader has got your 3 crossfader curves, 3 band eq’s, obviously for each channel, your gains and like I said, if you hold the shift key down, you can do the recording of your set instantly on the fly.One of the main features that I was really impressed about is with Serato Itch, you can analyze your track and then set up grids, so what we did was, with this, is you have a sync mode for a DJ who maybe is not as great at beat mixing, we added a sync feature, once your tracks are analyzed and when you press play, it automatically jumps to that grid making your mix absolutely perfect each time.If for some reason it analyzes incorrectly in serato, let’s say it’s a transition track, and you want to perfect the grid on it you can do it just by the surface of the platter, you don’t have to pull your laptop out or anything, it’s actually really impressive.The last thing I want to go over is the needle search, the needle search is something that we put on the CDJ-2000, it’s simple, we also put it on the S1 controller. What the Needle search is, is this represents the entire track so depending on where you touch it, it’s going to jump to that portion of the song,so then what’s great is, after you select the part of your song that you want and then you want to select a specific song it becomes an alphabet search, so what you do is you hold the shift key and on the screen you have the alphabet that shows on the top and it will drop wherever you want and then it will sort your crate depending on the letter.So, that’s the basic features of the unit. Oh! One more thing, I do want to go over, I’m sorry, you’ve got two banks of EQ’s, one for each side, so you’ve got an effects channel select, so, select let’s say A, you select the effect that you want, lets say it’s a flanger, next one is the parameter, wet and dry, and what you do is, you just turn it on with the effects switch, and now you’re effecting that channel here, and then you’re effecting on that side.So, instead of having the EFX processor or the Djm 800 where you have your effects on the bottom, now you have one on each side, so it’s really dope.Scott: So, you can actually have 2 effects setup, instead of having to scroll through and mix in?Unique: Absolutely, absolutely, you have your effects on each side, and then by just changing the effects channel select, you can just switch through your effects, it’s really dope. Well enjoy.Scott: DVDJ Unique. We’ve been waiting for this, can’t wait to get on it DDJ-S1 controller from Pioneer. It has everything that you need, It makes you quicker, faster, more efficient, who knows, it might even make you better looking. Pioneer that’s what they do. Thanks a lot to DVDJ Unique, be you, be unique, at UniqueSquared.com

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